


a postcard from the hotel's elevator

by mondaynight



Series: We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd [2]
Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:15:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25664245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaynight/pseuds/mondaynight
Summary: The God of Fate slips in between the doors of the elevator, joining Hope on her way back to her hotel room. A few floors up, Josie gets on.Then, the elevator breaks down. Shai forgets whether this was his doing or not—the creation of the design plan was months ago. Either way, he smiles.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Series: We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860709
Comments: 9
Kudos: 78





	a postcard from the hotel's elevator

**Author's Note:**

> If you are fire and I am fire,  
> Who blows the flame apart  
> So that desire eludes desire  
> Around one central heart?  
> -Issac Rosenberg

It’s nighttime in Las Vegas, and Shai wanders through the hotel’s casino. The summer buzzes with excitement, thus far, and the noise from the casino echoes across each floor—thirty-four floors total in this single hotel.

  
  


Shai feels utterly dizzy. He has a terrible headache, which only is growing as he encounters the countless amount of people drinking and partying. Did it really have to be _this_ specific hotel?

  
  


Right near the strip.

  
  


What the _hell_ are Hope and Josie doing here?

  
  


He looks around curiously. He hasn’t ever been to Las Vegas before. Not in any other universe. He peers outside of the windows, finding glowing lights and loud music. He winces, his eyes hurting already.

  
  


His ongoing headache is most likely due to his day—so far, he’s visited over five new universes, and checked on three of his past ones. It’s almost a record. He wonders what this one has to offer. He hopes it’s quiet, and his two girls—Hope and Josie—aren’t partying or something.

  
  


He’s been to two parties today already. The first had been a high-school party, which already had him near sick, his brain asking for just a little forgiveness. High-school students are very, very tiring to follow.

  
  


But, he does have to deal with it all of the time anyhow. Especially with Hope and Josie. The second party was a small hangout, which fared a little better to his pounding forehead.

  
  


He shakes his head, wanting to go to the bar. He’s had an eventful day. The bar a few feet away from him looks tasteful, but he can’t physically order or take a drink. He sighs.

  
  


His workload this week has been grueling. He really has to stop with his design plans.

  
  


Shai enters a crowded, narrow hallway, looking for his superstars. He catches a glimpse of auburn hair—it’s enough to garner his full attention—and Shai dashes off in that direction. He wants to yell to stop the girl, who’s walking too fast and gaining too much distance. He slides through a wall, hoping to be met with her.

  
  


She enters the hotel’s elevator, and Shai slips through the double-doors just as they close.

  
  


Hope is wearing a sports-fitted tracksuit, her black sweatpants and jacket decorated with a team emblem. He takes a quick look, trying to track the words across the emblem. Her name is also dotted right underneath the emblem.

  
  


**_USA SOCCER_ **

  
  


His eyebrows crunch together, curiosity dragging them along together. That’s new. Very new.

  
  


The blue-eyed girl has only been into sports in three past universes, but never had the sport been soccer. Shai decides he likes the change. She looks good in the jacket—professional _and_ sporty. Her hair is up in a ponytail and upon further inspection, she has light makeup dressed across her face. It’s enough to make her eyes pop—the masquera highlighting her long eyelashes. No other makeup accompanies it, other than the cherry lip-chap she’s wearing. 

  
  


He hopes it attracts Josie.

  
  


She looks very poised, but grave and serious.

  
  


It’s summer, so he guesses that she’s in some sort of tournament. Especially if she’s staying in a hotel. It reminds him of one of his own kids, who has a travel-ball tournament starting every spring and summer.

  
  


Hope hits a button—the button to the sixteenth floor. The door dings and opens, providing Shai with a sense of excitement. A stranger jumps on, along with two little kids. He wants to push them off. Are Josie and Hope _not_ meeting here?

  
  


A floor later, the three people get off and the elevator picks up to the tenth floor. It stops there again, and Shai holds his breath.

  
  


Hope’s foot taps across the floor repeatedly. She seems like she’s in a hurry. Probably to take a shower or go to sleep. She’s carrying a gym bag and it looks heavy, decked with clothes and gear. She apparently has just come from a game, as it’s almost ten and Shai doubts anyone is letting a sixteen-year-old girl play a game after eleven at night.

  
  


Her tapping even starts to irritate Shai. It’s adding to the _suspense_ and why is she so damn impatient for?

  
  


The door dings again, ringing in Shai’s sensitive ears. It seems like it takes forever for the doors to open. The walls close in on them, there suddenly isn’t enough air to go around, the ceiling descends by three feet. Shai stands in the corner, crossing his arms.

  
  


Hope lies in the middle of the elevator, her back against the farthest wall from the door.

  
  


She rests quite uneasily. Tough loss, perhaps?

  
  


Not a second later, Josie emerges from the door. She’s wearing cute Christmas pajama pants—it isn’t nowhere close to Christmas—and a gray-sweatshirt with the word _ARMY_ across it. There’s a frown on her face, her arms crossed like she didn’t just get her way.

  
  


_Why so upset?_

  
  


Shai wonders if she’s accompanied by her family or all alone.

  
  


Shai’s attention draws in right away when the two nod civilly towards each other—two teenagers being _teenagers_. Josie clicks a button. Shai misses it, too fascinated with the look on Hope’s face.

  
  


The elevator starts up again, Josie facing the doors with Hope behind. Shai doesn’t miss how Hope checks the brunette out. He smiles, looking between them.

  
  


After a second of nothing else, he frowns. Surely...this can’t be all?

  
  


It’s quite pathetic. A fucking... _nod_?

  
  


The elevator stops abruptly and Josie sighs, waiting for the doors to open. They don’t.

  
  


A second later, the elevator shaft swings back and forth with a loud noise. Hope freezes and Josie lurches forward, almost hitting the closed doors. She’s able to catch herself and her stance straightens after a moment.

  
  


The God of Fate becomes puzzled. What a weird occurrence.

  
  


It takes about thirty seconds of nothingness—the doors don’t open, the air falls silent—for Josie Saltzman to start to freak out. Hope stands there, doing nothing. She doesn’t seem so worried, just waiting for the elevator to start back up again.

  
  


The blue-eyed girl looks around the small room and Shai looks with her. He wonders what’s going on. This won’t be so good if they both die or get injured. They’re on the thirteenth floor and if the shaft falls down, he doesn’t know if it’s enough to injure someone. 

  
  


This isn’t something he’s accounted for. Did he, himself, set this up? He can’t remember if he set their location to this or what he first did.

  
  


After a full minute of Josie pacing back and forth, with Hope doing absolutely nothing but staring at the stranger in front of her, Josie starts banging on the set of buttons near the door.

  
  


She presses all of the buttons, even turning the emergency knob. Nothing happens at all. She even presses the red, _STOP_ button. It’s kind of stupid because, well, they’re already stopped.

  
  


Hope sighs. She slightly seems amused, but her expression becomes unreadable a second later. A sentence casually falls from her lips after Josie continues her nonsense.

  
  


“I don’t think that’s helping.”

  
  


Shai slightly smiles. This is...

  
  


_Progress._

  
  


Josie turns around half-angrily, half full of irritation. She throws the auburn-haired girl a humorless look, adding a snide comment, “I think it’s better than standing there and doing nothing.”

  
  


_Oh no_.

  
  


“And when has pressing a bunch of buttons mindlessly ever worked?” Hope says quickly back, her tone distasteful, her eyes heavy on the girl in front of her. Shai fights the urge to stand in between them, but realizes he can’t really do anything. He’s fucking invisible. He hates this.

  
  


Hope touches her shoulder achingly, rubbing at the discomfort that her heavy bag had brought on. She drops the bag to the floor and it plops down with a loud sound.

  
  


Josie huffs once with something like exasperation, then turns her back to the girl. They stand for a minute in silence, then Josie turns back around. The words come with great resentment, “Do you at least have a phone, or something we can use to call the hotel to let them know?”

  
  


“You don’t have _your_ phone with you?” Hope stays still, not digging for her own phone. She looks deep in thought, maybe wondering where Josie was heading. She narrows her eyes and Hope scornfully asks, “What? Were you going to leave the hotel with pajamas on?”

  
  


“You dumb-ass, I’m going up,” Josie points to the first button that she had pressed and Shai realizes that it’s the same floor that Hope pressed as well. The sixteenth floor.

  
  


They have rooms on the same floor?

  
  


His smile widens, but Hope doesn’t comment on it.

  
  


Hope’s face flushes, but then the red blush entirely fades. Shai thinks that this is very much a characteristic of hers—how she’s able to hide her emotions, how her face always seems unreadable, but not so when she’s looking at the brunette.

  
  


Although now, it’s kind of hard to interpret.

  
  


“So? Your phone?” Josie continues, gesturing for the stranger across from her to do something.

  
  


Hope rolls her eyes.

  
  


She digs through her duffel bag, but after a minute she comes up blank. It’s harder to hide her embarrassment this time. She even looks through her bag again, but doesn’t find her phone the second time.

  
  


“Un-freaking-believable,” Josie murmurs, rolling her eyes as well. She shakes her head, rubbing the back of her neck with slight concern. Hope still seems unfazed with the whole situation.

  
  


Ten minutes pass. Shai pauses. Is no one seriously going to help them? He doesn’t really care much for it, wanting his two girls to start to interact more. But they continue not to talk to each other, both stubborn.

  
  


He thought teenagers would usually become friends if something like this happened.

  
  


The tension in the room thickens. Josie shifts, digging her hands in the pocket of her hoodie.

  
  


Hope’s foot starts to tap the floor again, reminding Shai of just twenty minutes ago. Her mouth opens and then closes. Shai wonders what she’s leaving unsaid.

  
  


Another five minutes pass and Josie starts to shout into the door, screaming different variations of, “Help!”

  
  


Hope stops the brown-eyed girl three minutes into her fit of yelling and pounding the door, “Stop. You’re embarrassing me.”

  
  


_Yes, please stop,_ Shai agrees. His ears can’t take much more. His headache still hasn’t dwindled, even with the excitement of watching the two interact for the first time over and over again.

  
  


“What do you mean, _I’m_ embarrassing _you_? No one’s with us.”

  
  


_Wrong_.

  
  


“Just calm down,” Hope lowly says, her voice not pitching higher once. With the growing frown on Josie’s face, Shai can tell that the brunette doesn’t like it at all. Shai hates it, too. Why is Hope being so expressionless? It’s zero emotion.

  
  


_Muted_ emotion.

  
  


“You calm down,” Josie immaturely repeats, taking one step closer, as their eyes fixate on each other, Hope’s stare hardening with each successive second. Josie doesn’t stumble once.

  
  


As Josie is now a little closer to Hope, she sniffs the air. Hope leans on her left leg, looking a little uneasy again. After sniffing for a second time, Josie tilts her head, “Great. I’m stuck here _and_ you smell.”

  
  


Shai can agree with that. Hope does smell. It’s a sweaty type of scent, most definitely indicative of her coming from a game or practice. Her skin even glistens a little, at the top of her forehead and near her eyebrows.

  
  


“Screw you,” Hope hoists her bag on her shoulder again, discreetly trying to smell herself. Shai sees right through her. Shai tries to look for any sign of attraction that Hope or Josie shows. He vaguely remembers other universes, of wands and misfortune, of family feuds, of history and consequence.

  
  


This doesn’t pain him completely.

  
  


He can work with this.

  
  


“I wish this elevator came with a shower,” Josie adds underneath her breath—though it’s clear and loud as ever. She’s rude and it’s visibly making Hope just a little insecure and nervous.

  
  


For a second, Shai doesn’t think Hope has entirely heard it. The auburn-haired girl goes entirely quiet, her head pounding with thoughts.

  
  


“I was on my way to take one,” Hope finally clarifies quietly, also a little indignantly, though the moment has passed. Shai sighs with relief at how the blue-eyed girl feels the need to disclose that piece of information.

  
  


He still needs more. Much, much more.

  
  


Josie seems to dismiss Hope’s little comment, focusing her eyes on the girl’s jacket—specifically, her first and last name. “Mikaelson?”

  
  


“What?” Hope asks confusedly, her eyes pinning Josie to the wall that she stays near. Shai discreetly hears the beats of their hearts—he declares it abnormal. It can’t be called regular, when it’s a second too fast, when the blood rushes into their chests a moment too quickly.

  
  


“Why does that sound so familiar?”

  
  


“I don’t know,” Hope says shallowly. Shai hears the crack in the middle of her sentence. Josie doesn’t question it—the obvious lie. The God of Fate doesn’t understand it. Why would Josie recognize the last name Mikaelson?

  
  


He needs to do research. Right away. Right now if he wasn’t so preoccupied or invested in this moment.

  
  


Josie eyes Hope’s bag as well, her expression furrowing as she sees the travel duffel. Hope catches Josie’s eyeline and brings the bag behind her, in a way that’s suspicious and questionable. What is Hope hiding?

  
  


Hope’s lips remain pursed, her expression cool under the girl’s gaze. Josie seems to be trying to place Hope’s last name, or place Hope’s face. After a second too long, Hope decides that she’s had enough.

  
  


“Stop looking at me.”

  
  


“I’m not.”

  
  


Shai rolls his eyes. Can’t they just kiss and stop this nonsense?

  
  


Twenty minutes of committed silence flows between them, the room getting hotter and scorching. If it’s the broken air-conditioning or the energy coming off of the two girls, Shai will never know.

  
  


In the meantime, Shai does a little research. He learns about Hope’s parents in this universe. They both play soccer as well, but are distinguished as professional and highly well-known players on the women’s and men’s team alike.

  
  


He wonders if Josie also has a sport’s past as well. Nothing came up in the research, though. Maybe the girl just enjoys watching sports? He turns off his device, deciding he should definitely learn more and invest more into modern-day technology. The wonders of it.

  
  


Hope exhales sharply, drawing Shai’s attention instantly. She seems to be high on nerves and she steps towards the door, trying to pry the door open with only her hands.

  
  


“You’re embarrassing me,” Josie mocks, her voice turning deeper and raspier to mimic Hope’s own before. Hope scoffs, turning to lean back against the wall again.

  
  


He finds it weird that they haven’t even introduced each other, despite Hope’s nameplate on her jacket. He wills the air to sharpen and make them closer, he wills their breaths to coordinate and say more.

  
  


Josie finally falls to the floor, sitting criss-crossed. It’s been a full hour.

  
  


Hope watches her the whole time, Shai notices. Not once do her eyes fall to another subject. Not once do they glue to the floor, or look up timidly to the ceiling. Hope’s eyes dart back and forth across the girl’s features, examining her.

  
  


Analyzing her.

  
  


He wonders how Josie hasn’t noticed as well.

  
  


It’s something he thinks the most consciously about. Josie, all of the time, in every universe, seems to notice nothing but be the one to care the most. To be the one who _looks on_ the most. Hope does look on. But secretly—

  
  


Old-fashionedly.

  
  


Longingly.

  
  


Shai’s heart bursts.

  
  


The door suddenly flings open, with two employees ready with dozens of apologies. Hope hears none of it and Josie stands up right away, talking to the hotel’s employees. A conversation carries on for minutes, but Shai and Hope alike hear _nothing_.

  
  


Then the employees disappear and Josie steps once towards the exit. For a second, she lingers between the opened doors. She turns back to give Hope one last look.

  
  


_Do something_ , the God of Fate screams.

  
  


Idiots.

  
  


How is he supposed to work with this? He can’t do anything. Something akin to panic builds up within him.

  
  


He can’t do _anything_.

  
  


“I’m going to take the stairs up.”

  
  


The words are civil, though a little sharp.

  
  


It’s almost an invitation for Hope to follow her. To not take the elevator again. They’re on the thirteenth floor. That’s three more floors up for Hope to get back to her room.

  
  


Hope’s mouth opens. Just like before. The air in her throat tangles up and her lips close. She says nothing, the bag on her shoulder heavier than before. She rubs at the spot awkwardly again.

  
  


Josie walks away, nodding, stepping slowly. Burning slowly.

  
  


The doors to the elevator close agonizingly to Shai’s eyes. The God of Fate shakes his head. His headache burns with disappointment. All he can do is stare at Hope’s expressionless face and her motionless body.

  
  


The elevator doors acknowledge nothing of the past hour.

  
  


They shut easily, uncaring and unaware.

  
  


Behind the closed doors of the elevator, the God of Fate yells at Hope, mindlessly ranting and cursing all things foul and blasphemy. 

  
  


The blue-eyed girl stays unmoving.


End file.
